Intelligent Management Control for Unmanned Aircraft Navigation and Formation Keeping

Summary The paper presents some aspects that have become critical in the context of guidance, navigation, and control of unmanned aerial vehicles. The envisioned cost-effectiveness of unmanned air vehicles in support of a variety of military and civilian applications has introduced basic and applied research challenges in areas such as levels of autonomy and “intelligence” of the platform, interaction with manned control centers, reliability and safety of operations, and control management of single vehicle, as well as formation flights. The paper addresses issues such as dynamic modeling, formation management and control, and guidance aspects. Their origin and potential solutions are presented with particular attention to flexible formation keeping. Issues on UAV Guidance, Navigation, Control, and Formation Flight As of today, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are being proven as cost-effective platforms for supporting military operations. Indeed, as the operational roles of such vehicles expand beyond reconnaissance, intelligence, and data gathering, to electronic warfare, ground strike, and possibly air combat, many forecast that in the near future most combat aircraft will be unmanned. Remotely controlled, semi autonomous and autonomous vehicles will also play a key role in providing services for the civilian community. UAV’s can provide efficient platforms for surveillance, search and rescue, relief in natural disaster areas, and law enforcement operations. However, as the operational capabilities of unmanned vehicles develop, there is a real need for an increase in their level of autonomy, decisional capabilities among different tasks, reliable control of multi-vehicle operations, and in fight and ground command and control center system integration. The successful accomplishment of these objective depends on the operational specifics of the onboard instrumentation, especially position sensors and communications links, but also on the capability of developing methodologies based on reliable and advanced basic research results. The present paper outlines some of these aspects, although not in an exhaustive manner, with particular reference to formation dynamic modeling, its stability and control, and automated guidance and navigation. Increased performance in unmanned aerospace vehicles is leading toward mainly tailless new aerodynamic configurations for stealth capabilities, with perhaps high angles of attack for post stall aerodynamic regimes maneuverability, including thrust vectoring (agility, performance, and survivability following battle damage). In addiction, the use of multi-aircraft formations with remote control of a single or a few formation leader(s), with real time information exchange between the elements of the formation supervised by some form of intelligent control - for higher levels of mission effectiveness is becoming increasingly appealing. The present effort is related to the latter aspect that is formation flying of unmanned air vehicles. In the past, UAVs have been primarily used as test bed. They were used for instance to test flight envelope expansion, and flight control system for the manned aircraft or as a target for weapon systems. Over the past ten years, they have been envisioned as operational airborne platforms and have received considerable attention especially in many military strategic plans. From an engineering point of view, this was made possible and affordable in part by the miniaturization trend of flight control system components (sensors, actuators, CPUs, data acquisition systems, etc.), and by the increasing performance and speed of communication links. The advantages of UAV technology appear several and clear. These vehicles, either flying in formation or individually, have high maneuverability potential, and in fact the only g-limitations are due to structural constraints because of the absence of a human pilot. In addition to eliminating the risk of human losses, UAVs have additional design advantages: a sophisticated cockpit is not required, no high redundant flight